Postponed to 2024:  Spring Training: Designing Better Services, Together

One of the best things about these sessions is getting a collective of people together to go through the experience together. It's turning out not to be the best time of the year to make that happen, so we will look to hold this training in 2024. If you've signed up already, we'll contact you to reimburse you and connect with you (and thank you for the efforts you went through to sign up).

Reach out if you have any questions, and we look forward to connecting with you in other ways in the meantime.

POSTPONED UNTIL 2024

This two-day workshop is for anyone interested in Service Design or who’s tasked with enhancing service provision. You may be from:

• An operational role responsible for delivering a citizen or customer-facing service
• A strategic or policy role where your work requires you to think about how big ideas are delivered as services
• UX, Strategy, Research, Marketing, IT, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Business Analysis or Change functions and need to bolster your skills in designing and delivering joined-up services

It will benefit anyone at any stage of their role or career who’s interested in growing their Service Design knowledge and skill set.

We believe that Service Design is a collaborative endeavour that gives equal attention to the needs of those receiving the service (customers or citizens) as it does to those providing the service (staff, partners). Service Design also designs for the organisation, ensuring that whatever is required can be delivered sustainably. And most of all, designing services requires co-design - we design with, rather than for or at people.

Day one of this workshop largely focuses on the organisational requirements of a Service Design project, giving you the skills to scope out your project, tell the story about why this is the right work to do and why this is the right approach. Topics include:

• What is a service
• Why Service Design is important
• Exploring examples of services (how they’re constructed, how they work)
• Scoping a Service Design project
• Doing a (desk) service assessment using a template
• Identifying the most useful outputs and outcomes from a Service Design project
• Learning Service Design framing so you can talk about your project from a service perspective.

Day two focuses on the skills, knowledge and mindsets required to undertake small service design projects or to work with more experienced service designers. Activities include:

• Interviewing - you’ll  interview a member of the public about a service-related challenge so that you can learn the skills to see service-related problems from a service user's perspective
• Sensemaking - you’ll work with your fellow participants to examine what you learned from the interviews and look for service improvement opportunities
• Prototyping - how to create service prototypes that you can test at very little cost to help you work out what you might be able to do to improve service provision
• Prototype testing - you’ll have the opportunity to test service prototypes with a member of the public to experience firsthand how simple prototypes can help you learn enough to help you make better decisions.

Impact and follow-up

Every attendee will be offered a complimentary 45-minute Service Design coaching session with one of Meld’s highly experienced designers.

Note also: 

We’ll teach you skills that are sometimes described as Design Thinking or Human/User Centred Design. For this workshop, we’ll apply these skills to the design of services. If you’ve attended one of our ‘Introduction to HCD’ courses before, this will focus those skills on the design of services.

Why learn from us?

Our work has won prestigious awards, including two Best in Class Good Design Award® in 2020. In collaboration with Queensland Government’s One Stop Strategy and Implementation Office, Meld Studios won the 2018 Good Design Award® of the Year for the Growing Human-Centred Design Across Queensland Government project.

Meld awarded Good Design Team of the Year 2022

“The Good Design Team of the Year Award is a special honour bestowed annually to a design team who consistently performs at the highest level in the annual Australian Good Design Awards and has made a positive and tangible impact in establishing and maintaining a design-led culture within their organisation."

We work with many of Australia’s private and public organisations using Service Design to help them tackle their biggest challenges. We continually evolve our approach and love to share what we’ve learned along the way. We use real-life examples and encourage others to share their experiences and questions.

FAQS

Do you tailor and run your courses for organisations?

We can and have done for many organisations. Please email us at hello@meldstudios.com.au for details. 

What if I need to cancel? 

Refunds are available up to 7 days before the event. You can also transfer your registration to a colleague.

What are the times for the days?

The workshops start promptly at 9 a.m. daily and run through until approximately 4 p.m.

What attendees have said about our workshops

"I loved this workshop! Iain and Karina know their stuff, and have inspired me to think more holistically about using HCD principles and techniques. I feel confident I can influence and create change."

"Thanks for a fun and informative introduction to Human Centered Design. Great facilitation and group activities. “

"So great to see/hear work with optimism and creativity having such a meaningful impact in what can otherwise be dry business/gov strategies. Definitely received so many answered to roadblocks in our current customer focus and cultural change. Thank you."

"This is the only service design course I know of that addresses the intersection between tools, socialisation and organisation/of project activities. You nailed it."